Final Fantasy XIV shuns F2P to 'regain the trust of our players'

So Final Fantasy XIV has temporarily gone dark while Square works its revamp magic. What will it look like when the servers come back? That's hard to say right now, but one thing we can tell you is that the company won't be jumping on the free-to-play bandwagon right away. Producer Naoki Yoshida recently told VG247 that sticking with a subscription model is all about honoring past commitments.

"One of the promises we originally stated was that we would release the game with a subscription model," Yoshida explained. "Players will be able to play it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days in the year if they paid a subscription fee. So to regain the trust of our players we must of course fulfill this promise. Right now we believe that to be more important than any kind of business decision."

He went on to say F2P isn't necessarily the way forward for every game. "Depending on what kind of game you have -- it's hard to say which model is better. Is free-to-play better? Are subscriptions better? It just really depends, and it's hard to say which one is better."